Eternal Evil

Paul Sharpe, a tv commercial director, has been studying astral projection under the tutelage of a mysterious woman named Janus. At first, projecting his spirit out of his body brings him a sense peace and contentment. Unfortunately, while he sleeps his spirit has been taking unauthorized trips and killing people in a muderous rage, including his own family.
This is a 1985 Canadian film, also known as The Blue Man. Why, I don't know. It stars Winston Rekert as Sharpe, a familiar face on Canadian tv probably best known as the star of Neon Rider,and Karen Black as Janus. Eagle-eyed viewers should also be able to spot Lois Maxwell, the orignal Moneypenny from the Connery/Moore James Bond films.
The film plods along at its own pace and manages to overcome its inexpensive look and feel to deliver a couple of good scares.

Death Warmed Up

This 1986 New Zealand thriller is a hokey horror-revenge movie. I've had two tries at watching this movie before I could watch the whole thing. That's dedication, let me tell you. A teen is hypnotized and ordered to kill his parents. After blowing them away with a shotgun (and taking out a lamp as well, just to be safe), he's locked in the looney bin with no memory of having done the awful deed.
He's released seven years later, and decides to take his revenge on the man who hypnotized him, but the man is now the head of a large pyschiatric institute and he seems to be creating his own army of mutant zombies. I guess. I don't know, it's hard to follow.
There's a car chase that looks straight out of The Road Warrior. There's lots of blood and heads blowing up. If you like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.

Embryo

In this 1976 film, Rock Hudson plays a veterinarian who strikes a dog while driving during a rainstorm. He takes the dog to his lab to try and save it, but the situation quickly becomes more complicated as he realizes that the dog is pregnant and is too badly injured to survive. He tries to save the puppy fetuses, but they all die save one. It will die too, unless he uses an experimental growth hormone he's been working on. He save the pup, but it grows at an accelerated rate.
He discovers that if he treats puppy with the drug, its growth rare is accelerated, but off the drug the dog ages at a normal rate. The dog also seems to be of above average intelligence, but unbeknowst to the doctor the dog also has an evil viscous streak. He decides to try the same experiment on a human embryo.
He gets hold of a living 14 week-old human fetus and using his growth hormone is able to bring it to term in a matter of days. Unlike the puppy, the baby continues to age even without the treatment and in a matter of weeks she grown into Barbara Carrera. Like the puppy however, she also also has a vicious streak.
This is a long, dragged out movie that takes a long time getting anywhere. Roddy McDowall has a brief cameo that livens things up, but otherwise it really drags. It also never really addresses the ethical questions it raises. It was made two years before the first "test tube baby" was born, the perfect time for a thoughtful examination of these issues, but it dodges those questions to concentrate instead on being a slowly-building thriller. It fails on that count, too.

The Man With the Screaming Brain

B-movie king Bruce Campbell stars in (and co-wrote and directed) Man With the Screaming Brain. Campbell plays an American businessman who, along with his wife, is in Bulagria for a business meeting. He’s the typical "ugly American," loud, impatient and impolite. His marrige is on the rocks, and he doesn’t help matters by flirting with a mysterious gypsy woman. His wife helps even less by giving their cab driver an extra big tip. It turns out that the cab driver was engaged to the gypsy, resulting in all manner of murder and mayhem. Fortunately, the bodies end up in the hands of a mad Bulgarian scientist (Stacey Keach(?!)) who (with his Russian assistant played by Ted Raimi) has a knack for transplanting brains and resurrecting bodies.
Essentially, this is pretty silly stuff. It gives Bruce Campbell a chance to do his best Steve Martin impression, and his character ends up sharing his brain with his wife’s lover, the cab driver. Shot on location in Bulgaria, the film has pretty good production values for a film of with a limited budget.
There’s a good number of extras for a low budget movie. There’s some behind the scenes docs, but the best one is a short feature where Campbell and his writing partner chart the 20+ years it took to get this film made. This was worth the price of the DVD all by itself.
Nothing in the film is overly impressive, yet nothing is really embarrassing either. Well, maybe Ted Raimi’s version of Russian rapping. Thankfully, it’s short. Otherwise, it’s a solid and enjoyable, fun B-movie.

The Nightmare Never Ends

This 1980 film also goes by the name of Cataclysm and Satan's Supper.
Claire Hansen (played by Faith Clift, star of Night Train to Terror and Horror Express) is having strange dreams involving Nazis, much to the chagrin of her husband James (played by Richard Moll, Bull of Night Court -- with hair no less, or a lousy toupée). Meanwhile, an aged concentration camp survivor has seen a Nazi from the camps, only the Nazi hasn't aged and still looks 25. He tries to convince his policeman friend (played by long-time tv-actor Cameron Mitchell) that it's the same guy, but to no avail. He is killed confronting his tormentor from the past.
Meanwhile James, (who writes books denying the existence of God), is visited by a man named Papini who is branded with the mark of the devil (666) but warns James that the devil is returning.
Somehow everyone shows up at the same disco, where it turns out that the apparently unaging Nazi is the devil. Or at least one of the devil's flunkies.
This is a really low budget film; the acting is mostly of the amateur hour variety, and there is nothing special about the effects. However, the story is entertaining and it's filmed with just enough professionalism to be watchable, provided nothing else is on.
It just goes to show you that the menace of the Nazis never ends, just like this movie.

Werewolf Woman

"And on the night of the full moon, the howl of the werewolf will be heard. Its terrible cry will make men tremble! They will close their shutters and bolt their doors!"
Pretty scary, eh kids?
This is a 1976 Italian film originally called La Lupa mannara, but has also gone by a plethora of other names: Daughter of a Werewolf, Naked Werewolf Woman, She-Wolf, Terror of the She Wolf, The Legend of the Wolf Woman, The Wolf Man and Werewolf Woman. And I'm pretty sure that the girl on the poster isn't in the movie.
A woman is having strange dreams that she is a werewolf, inspired by a family legend that one of her ancestors was a werewolf. Her father consults a doctor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Wayne Newton. She begins to travel the countryside, seducing then killing men. But she falls in love with a kind man and decides to give up her evil ways. But she is raped and her lover killed by a band of thugs. She returns to her evil ways to take revenge.
This is a cheap horror flick of the ilk that Ed Wood might have made in his final days: lots of blood and boobies. In fact every actress in the cast shows off at least one at some point. The werewolf make-up is awful, the acting is average, the story is pure hokum. It is directed competently enough, but there isn't much here to work with. Nope, this is pretty much all schlock.

Blood Tide

A long time ago when the earth was green, the inhabitants of an ancient Greek island used to sacrifice virgins to placate a beast that lived in an underwater cave.
While a modern achaeologist (James Earl Jones) and his girlfriend (Lydia Cornell) are raiding the cave of its treasures unbeknowst to the island's inhabitants, another man and his sister (Martin Kove and Mary Louise Weller) are searching for their other sister who they believe might have travelled here. The natives aren't thrilled with outsiders visiting the island and are warned off by an elder played by José Ferrer. It turns out the lost sister is on the island, but she is plagued by strange dreams. Jones, in his raids on the cave, has re-awakened the beast, and it kills his girlfriend. The villagers realize another sacrifice will have be made, and luckily the lost sister just happens to be a virgin.
This is a moderately competent cheap monster movie. We hardly ever see the monster, and for a movie that involves an island and an underwater cave, we hardly ever go underwater, either. Ferrer and Jones manage to raise the level of the proceedings enough to make it only just marginally entertaining. Let's face it: James Earl Jones could read the dictionary with so much gravitas that you'd think the world was going to end before he gets past "ablate."
There's a lot of talent on display here -- Ferrer and Jones have four Oscar nominations and a win between them -- but this movie seems to have been a career killer. It took director Richard Jeffries 26 years to get his next film made, and Weller pretty much retired after this. On the other hand, Lydia Cornell was just starting her career -- she was just about to breakout big on the tv sitcom Too Close for Comfort -- and although she still acts occasionally, she's gone on to a career as a progressive radio host in Las Vegas and an active blogger.

Moon of the Wolf

David Janssen (tv's The Fugitive) stars in this 1972 tv-movie, playing a sheriff in the Louisiana bayou. A young girl has been killed, apparently by wild dogs, but the Sheriff discovers that she was killed before the dogs got her. The problem is that the town is full of suspects, but the sheriff slowly starts to realize that the real suspect may be something that is supernatural.
Any film that can give character actors like Bradford Dillman and Geoffrey Lewis a paycheque automatically gets a star in my book. The entire cast is good, as no one goes over the top and begins chewing the scenery. The werewolf effects are cheap and clumsy which is what one would expect, but Moon on the Wolf is a reasonable effective thriller.